I'd like to pick at your brain some more with more questions, if you don't mind; If you feel this is too argumentative, feel free to tell me and I will delete this post:
A lot of tournaments in most competitive videogames consider maintaining mental and being able to play a lot at a given time to be a serious competitive element to their games, and players that cannot play for hours without losing their luster are docked points by most people for this. VGC tournaments in-person for instance are all a long day affair, and in a lot of player's accounts of how they did, their mental throughout the day as a competitor is a big element of their performance.
For a personal example, I play competitive Splatoon, a 4v4 shooter. Even losing the tournament, it will likely take hours for our run as a team to finish. Keeping mental and not getting tired throughout the stretches of pools, loser's bracket, winners etc. is considered a big strength as a player, and actively coveted
I can see the point of timezones though, especially as a player who has been unable to play in certain teams or events because of timezone conflicts. But as I mentioned, it seems that Smogon has a big issue with activity wins/losses? There is a Policy Review thread active about it, currently..
What makes Smogon tend to not care for this element in competitive tournaments?
I edited my post after posting and it covers some of this haha but :P
I think the reason just comes down to that Smogon prioritises skill at the game over any other factor. We still have the mental fortitude testing -- particularly as in many tournaments (and most rands tournaments) later rounds in single elim will become best of 5, and in team tournaments the main formats will have a best of 5 slot. Best of 3 is, in itself, a pretty time-consuming and tiring affair sometimes.
I don't actually think players in other tournaments perceive being able to play a lot on one big event day as an element of skill at the game. They do consider it an element of being good at that game competitively, because the only way for those games' events to run are as major in-person events. But that's not game skill, and shouldn't be misconstrued as such. If someone in a video game that usually runs in-person events had a 100% winrate against the best players in the world, but only played 1 series a day, no one would claim they were bad at the game. They'd recognise their skill while also understanding that the tournament structure is bad for them. EDIT: Also yeah it doesn't only refer to in-person; Splatoon and Pokémon Unite and such are online event days because you have to arrange to all play together as a team anyway. Pokémon doesn't have that problem either.
So Smogon doesn't run major live tournaments simply for the reason that it doesn't have to. Having the stamina to play for 10 hours a day isn't something that makes you better at the game Pokémon. It would make you better at 10 hour in-person Pokémon tournaments, but that's the only thing it would make you better at.
The activity wins thread in Tournament Policy isn't actually about activity wins or losses, really. It's about decorum regarding emergencies. It's kind of a stupid thread IMO because emergencies that happen 30 seconds or even during a series are still valid. If your house sets on fire in the finals of OST you shouldn't lose because you timed out in the game while putting it out. Pokémon has lots of activity wins and losses in the first round, and then a few hold-overs in the second round, of major tournaments. After that it dwindles a lot, and so in large tournaments like random battles usually has, activity wins and losses are basically not a thing from round 4 or on, and at that point there's still a huge number of players in it. Those players get to have fun and not be playing 9 hours into the tournament by the time they get to finals, which lets them show off their skill. I just have no idea why it would be desirable for that not to be the case when it doesn't have to be.
Why make the player experience worse just to test which players can best deal with it being worse?